


Ternary Logic

by fairbreeze



Series: Ternary Logic [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Earl Harlan deserves nice things, M/M, Other, abuse of the capitalization in the word "Science", canon character "death", team cecearlos 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:59:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbreeze/pseuds/fairbreeze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Earl tries to hate Carlos and fails miserably.  Carlos honors a last request and falls in love not-so-instantly.  Cecil finds a surprise waiting for him in a new home, and another surprise waiting in an old one.  Earl wakes up in a compromising position.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is going to mark the first time I've ever had a fic that wanted to be a chaptered fic instead of a series of connected, separate fics. Tags are for the finished fic, this chapter doesn't really contain Cecil in the slightest.
> 
> I'd love some feedback on Earl interpretation, since he's pretty much entirely headcanon at this point and I don't think I've ever written a non-OC who had this little source material to go on.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earl was only protecting Carlos from his own stupidity vis-a-vis Night Vale because it would make Cecil sad if he died. And then Carlos had to go and be nice to him, and have beautiful hair, and a perfect smile and actually listen to his opinion... and it's confusing.
> 
> Spoilers for Eternal Scouts, but... um... why are you reading this if you care about spoilers for Eternal Scouts?

What Cecil didn’t know was how well Earl knew Carlos.

He should have. Cecil seemed almost omnipotent at times, had seemed that way long before he had become Night Vale’s Voice and it was only worse now that he had. He knew all kinds of things that happened all over town, things that were impossible to know, but he’d always seemed to have a strange blind spot for one particular boy-scout-turned-scoutmaster. So it wouldn’t have surprised Earl at all if Cecil had never once seen him going about his day and it certainly didn’t surprise him when his scouts got a mention on the radio and he didn’t. But ever since _The Scientist_ had come into town, it seemed like Cecil’s awareness was _constantly_ on him. Every broadcast had some little detail about him or his team of scientists and every broadcast, Earl wondered when Cecil was going to comment on the fact that Earl had been seen with them almost as much as with his scouts these days.

Not that Cecil needed to worry or anything, even if he was going to, which Earl was very well aware he was not. It’s not like there was anything going on between them. There was never anything going on between Earl and _anyone_ , as a matter of fact, a fact that Cecil was blissfully oblivious to, but that Earl was painfully aware of every day. But he _was_ around Carlos a lot, now, and he was surprised it didn’t merit some kind of mention, even just in passing, particularly when Cecil would report on various stories that Earl knew he was there for and involved in without even a mention of him, as though he were just another one of the scientists.

See, Earl knew a lot about the town, and Carlos was constantly asking questions and getting into trouble, and he was a Scientist, not someone prepared to fight off the terrors of Night Vale. The man thought that you just _went to the Library_ , just walked right in and got what you wanted. He thought the Librarians were there to _help_ you. He needed someone to look after him, before he died some kind of horrible death. Cecil would be sad if he died, after all, and Earl could protect him. He didn’t like Carlos but he didn’t want Cecil to be sad. 

And at first, that’s all it was. He should hate Carlos and, truth be told, he was determined not to like him, to protect him for Cecil but to make his contempt for him well known in the process. He was an Outsider and he wanted him to understand that the only reason this place hadn’t chewed him up and spat him out was that Earl kept saving him, and that he was _only_ doing that because for _some_ reason his “best-friend” had fallen head over heels for him. 

But then Carlos was actually _nice_. Carlos was kind to him from the beginning, openly, honestly _grateful_ to be rescued, eager to sit around and take notes on Earl’s knowledge of Night Vale, its dangers and beauty both. He could sit around for _hours_ and let Earl talk about scouting and badges and bloodstone circles, taking notes and asking appropriately interested questions as though the things Earl was saying were _fascinating_. He _respected_ him in a way he was only used to getting from his troop. He listened to him, engaged and interested in precisely the way Cecil wasn’t. It was everything he’d ever wanted in a friend, in something more than a friend, from _anyone_ , and here it was from the one person in all of Night Vale he _wanted_ to hate.

For a while he hated him anyway, just to be contrary. He pretended to be polite while he seethed inside. He was viciously, dangerously jealous. He hung around him and the scientists just to see them fail and laughed privately when they did. The whole thing was awful and made him feel like an awful person and lasted a little more than a week. Carlos was misguided and entirely too much of a hero with entirely too little concept of the consequences, but he was intelligent and earnest and every bit as unfairly attractive as Cecil made him out to be on the radio. _Perfect_. He was _perfect_ , and he was as warm and present and real as Cecil was cool and distant and otherworldly; Cecil’s laugh could send shivers of tension up his spine, but Carlos’s made things relax and uncurl in him instead. He started spending time with him because he _wanted to_ and less so that he could make sure he was there when he inevitably needed saving. They ended up talking about childhoods, about friends, about hobbies beyond their jobs and places outside of Night Vale. Earl hadn’t been to any, but he had read about them and he could listen to Carlos talk about them all night, the cadence of his voice pleasant enough, even if he would never have described it as anything remotely approaching “caramel”.

Cecil was allowed a little bit of dramatic license, of course, since he was in love but Earl denied himself that, forced himself to be realistic and call things as he saw them. He wasn’t in love, after all, not with _Carlos_ anyway. He wasn’t allowed to be in love with Carlos. It sat more and more bitter in his heart every day, the truth of it like the twist of a dagger every time he smiled that perfect smile and Earl felt his own lips curl up in response.

He threw himself, instead, into making sure they got together. He encouraged Carlos to call Cecil to get the word out about things. He talked about him in as charming a way as possible, without seeming interested. Whenever Carlos was confused or, more often, _horrified_ by something Cecil had said on the radio, either about Carlos himself, or about Science in general, he was there to explain what Night Vale was like, what Cecil was like. He played the matchmaker every way he knew how, and he was pretty sure it was working, Carlos starting to laugh warmly and shake his head when talking about Cecil, now, instead of seeming almost frightened by his enthusiasm. Earl basked in all of that fondness, his own little prize for a job well done, even though he knew none of it was for him. Friends. He couldn’t possibly ask for two better friends, one a fond memory from childhood that provided a constant for him in a rapidly changing and frightening world and one a new presence in his life, interesting and interested, someone who he could connect with even without a shared past, who was just different enough to be remarkable and just similar enough, in many ways, that he could relate. He couldn’t ask for _more_ than that, than seeing them happy and in love, could he? It would be all right. He would be all right. For them. With them.

Apparently, he couldn’t even ask for that.

Saying good-bye to Cecil was surprisingly easy. There was only one thing he wanted to make sure Cecil knew in case he didn’t come back from the Eternal Scout ceremony, only one regret he had ever had concerning his childhood best friend, and it was easy enough to slip it in at the end of the interview. He didn’t know if it would make it on the air. He didn’t care if it did anymore. He didn’t care about a lot of things anymore. He would be mortified if he survived, but if he didn’t, _we could have had something_ wasn’t a bad eulogy, after all. It was the story of his life.

Carlos, though, Carlos was more difficult. He hadn’t had an entire lifetime to work out what he wanted to say to Carlos in his head. It didn’t help that when he walked into the lab, Carlos was thankfully the only one in there but also very deeply involved in some kind of Science Thing, lab goggles on his head and dropper in one gloved hand. He put a drop of something on a slide and stuck it under a microscope and didn’t even look up when Earl came in, just grunted some kind of non-committal, distracted greeting at him, leaning into the microscope and taking notes on whatever he was seeing, below. Earl felt a flash of something that was half irritation, half heartbreak, because Carlos had _always_ been happy to pay attention to him and he was only just realizing that it was actually mostly when _Carlos_ wanted to pay attention, not when Earl wanted him to. Of course. _Of course_. The story of his life. 

But Carlos wasn’t native to Night Vale, he reminded himself, and if he didn’t know about Librarians, or Dot Day, or re-education, maybe he didn’t know about the Boy Scouts, either, and what it meant to say that no one had ever been an Eternal Scout before, the uncertainty and terror that might bring.

“Carlos,” he managed, croaked, the words half stuck in his throat and there was a warm surge of something that might have been happiness and might have been tears when Carlos looked up out of the Science immediately, a little frown appearing on his lovely face. He tilted his head to the side quizzically, 

“Earl? Is there something wrong?” Earl knew he’d gotten his earlier assumption correct, because Carlos didn’t say it like someone who knew there was something wrong and was fishing for what. It was a genuine question, said with a hint of the kind of worry you get before you know if you should be worried or not. Earl suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. If there was something worse than being ignored, he suddenly found, it was being paid attention to.

“It’s nothing. I just. The Eternal Scout ceremony is in less than an hour. It’s… two of my scouts are the ones being inducted and I’m both proud and terrified,” that much was part of his prepared statement, falling rote off his tongue, but Carlos (Outsider Carlos) reacted differently from everyone else in town that he’d told about it, 

“Terrified?” he set the dropper down and reached up, took off his safety goggles, which did completely unfair things to his beautiful hair, and looked more seriously at Earl, “Are you alright?”

“I’m…” no, no he wasn’t alright, and he might now consider Carlos a friend, but he was still bitterly angry that someone who should have been something like a rival was the _only_ person in town to ask him that, “… confused,” he finished, lamely. And he was. He was confused about a number of things. Carlos stripped off his gloves and stood, stretching all of the kinks out of his back and moving over towards him, 

“All of the crazy bullshit you’ve saved me from, and you really think a Scout Ceremony is going to do you in?” Carlos raised his eyebrows in surprise and dismissal, still not quite understanding, “You’ll be fine.” _I won’t be,_ Earl wanted to say, _the tablets under City Hall were very specific. I am going to my death and the only person in town that cares is someone who I want to hate with every fiber of my being and **can’t**_. Something must have shifted in his face, because even Carlos, who was self-admittedly not that great with picking up subtle social cues, seemed to realize that this was more serious than he was previously giving it credit for being, that Earl was _genuinely_ scared and not just nervous about giving a speech or something.

“Hey…” Carlos reached out and put a hand on Earl’s shoulder, warm, friendly, _there_ , “Hey… you’ll be _fine_. It’ll be okay. You’re one of the strongest people I know and I’m sure that you’ll—mmrrph!” Earl didn’t actually know why he kissed him, then, when he’d never given into the desire to before. It might have something with never having _admitted_ to himself he’d had the desire to before, but once his mouth was on his, he couldn’t remember anymore why he’d waited. He was going to his death and maybe, just for once before it was all over, he was allowed to be totally selfish and self-serving about something, to have something he wanted for no other reason than he wanted it. It wouldn’t matter in a few hours anyway.

Carlos’s mouth was warm, temperature but also temperament, and tasted like lavender, and Earl deepened the kiss without thinking. He got his hands in that ridiculously perfect hair and tipped his body into Carlos’s. Carlos kept making little surprised noises every time he shifted, but he had his arms around him, hesitant but not unwelcoming, pulling him _closer_ and Earl was going to be more embarrassed than he had ever been in his _life_ when he finally pulled back, but right now the tension unwound from him whipcrack fast and he _melted_ into Carlos’s arms, a soft moan of _relief_ bubbling up out of him, wretched and wonderful, against Carlos’s mouth. _Into_ Carlos’s mouth, and he wasn’t even actually sure if it was him who had started it or Carlos, but it was so unfair that even his _tongue_ was perfect, sliding against his in a way that managed to be passionately hot and _sweet_ at the same time, his hands having shifted up to cup against his cheeks. 

Everything was so _sweet_ ; even as Earl could tell he was clinging too hard, probably uncomfortably so, Carlos was nothing but soothing, _protective_ , even through the low, rumbling moan he voiced back into Earl’s mouth when Earl shifted deeper into his arms. Earl had never, ever had anyone act like they wanted to take care of _him_ , before— even when Cecil and he had been close, it had always been him taking care of the dreamy, excitable future radio host, not the other way around. Carlos kissed like he could somehow make everything bad in the world go away, if he could just kiss Earl long enough, thoroughly enough.

One kiss turned into two, three, more, each of them taking turns dragging the other back into them when one of them started to pull away. Time melted and pulled around them like taffy and Earl could feel his bones doing the same, the tension he had been carrying, his fear, until he wasn’t sure how long they had been kissing anymore, until he wasn’t certain of anything in the world but Carlos’s mouth on his, the steady beat of his heart and the press of his hands, something that was not necessarily calm itself, but pulsed, breathed, calmed him. Carlos’s hands soothed against his back when Earl stopped kissing him and clung to him instead, eyes screwed tight against having to witness and return to reality. He buried his head in Carlos’s shoulder so he wouldn’t have to see whatever was in his face, but whatever there was, Carlos said nothing, just slid his hands, warm (so warm) up and down his back, stroked through his hair, silent and solid and so very, very _there_. _Gods_ but he was going to be _so good_ for Cecil, excitable, passionate Cecil, everything that Earl couldn’t ever have been and, for once, the thought didn’t fill him with any bitterness or hurt, just a deep, deep love and an aching sense of melancholy, that he could never have something that beautiful.

Still, he had a job to do, and a very important one at that, and he was finding that his tension had, in fact, been soothed away, and he was left mostly just feeling _proud_ and at a strange kind of peace with himself, with the world around him, with his inevitable, approaching death. It wasn’t a bad note to go out on, being kissed warm down to his toes and knowing that everything would be all right once he was gone, that everyone he truly cared for would be taken care of. It was more than most people got. And by the time he took back his own weight and backed off, he was flushed but composed and Carlos… Carlos was flushed too, beautifully so, his eyes still a sort of shock-wide, but concerned as well, confused, even as his hands were reluctant to let Earl go. 

“Earl, you—“ Earl laid fingers over his mouth, because there wasn’t any _time_ , now that it was back to moving normally, and he had an appointment to keep,

“If I don’t come back…” _when I don’t come back…_ he pushed completely away, made himself take a full step backwards before he lost the will to go, “If I don’t come back, take care of Cecil for me. I know you think he’s really weird, but I have never seen him love someone like he loves you,” he finally, _finally_ , allowed a little bit of his past to show in his voice, where Cecil was concerned, because Carlos needed to know how serious he was, “Never… Give him a chance at least, okay, and try not to get yourself killed. “

“I understand. I will, uh, I won’t, but what about…” Carlos was talking to the air, “… you?” 

Carlos looked around the empty lab, confused. He’d lied, when he said he understood. He didn’t understand anything. He didn’t understand anything _at all_. 

And that night, when he listened to a repeat of Cecil’s show, he understood too well, and too late.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos thinks about replacements and whether we should even need them. 
> 
> Spoilers for One Year Later.

Carlos looked around the empty lab, confused. He’d lied, when he said he understood. He didn’t understand anything. He didn’t understand anything _at all_. 

It wasn’t that he thought Cecil was weird, he wanted to explain to Earl. He _did_ think Cecil was weird. He thought _everything_ here was weird. Everything here _was_ weird; it wasn’t an opinion-- it was an Empirical fact. That wasn’t it, though. It was that he had always just assumed, despite all of Earl’s insistence to the contrary, that Cecil was just making up a good story for his listeners, like any good radio host. The tall, handsome outsider, come to town for reasons unknown and better left unasked about seemed like the kind of thing people in this place would eat up. Maybe Cecil even had a bit of a crush; if anyone could nurse a schoolboy crush as a fully functional, professional adult it was Cecil, after all. But people didn’t just _fall in love_ like that. Everything was just him being giddy and turning it into a good story. It wasn’t like Cecil had _feelings_ for him, did he?

But then, he hadn’t thought that Earl had had any kind of feelings for him, either. And he definitely did have feelings, though they might well have been ambiguous or otherwise ill thought out or defined. Carlos didn’t possess any sort of true grasp on interpersonal behavior, but he was pretty sure that that wasn’t just an “I don’t want to die without having kissed someone and you are standing here” sort of a kiss. Earl kissed him more like he had wanted to for a while and that the threat of death had caused either caution or possibly guilt to be thrown to the wind. Whether Earl was fully aware of it or not, that kiss had been something he had wanted for awhile and that left Carlos in doubt about everything he potentially knew about _Cecil_ and where he stood with him, because he hadn’t even noticed Earl even really _liked_ him, much less would want to kiss him and he had, for the past few weeks, actually been _looking_ for signs of that, hoping for them just a bit, in fact. Earl had been so kind, and helpful and was so interesting to talk to… he might have been nursing a bit of a crush of his own on the Scoutmaster.

And _God_ but that had been a hell of a good kiss, too. If he hadn’t already been nursing a crush, he was now. It had been desperate and passionate and frightened, and feeling Earl genuinely soothed by his fumbling attempts to try to help had warmed him until he was surprised, in a place like Night Vale, that he wasn’t literally glowing from it. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed something like that, how much he’d missed any kind of physical contact in the past year here in Night Vale, denied even the hugs of his friends or his family, much less the touch of a lover. He’d never gone this long without at least platonic affection, though he could still count on one hand the number of sexual partners he’d managed to have between school and work and Science. More so than that, he’d always been a sucker for being _needed_ , possibly more than any single other thing in his life. No one had ever needed him in a romantic or sexual way before, he’d never known he could actually soothe someone, calm them with a touch or a kiss or even just his presence. 

That it was Earl, a man who was boyishly attractive, lean and athletic and, above all else, intensely _capable_ , intelligent, interesting, just sweetened things until they were almost unbearable. Having someone who he admired for his courage and his competence (and _patience_ ) like Earl _need_ him for something, to help them, to provide something, and then to have it be something _other_ than scientific data, other than his mind, something physical and visceral… he honestly didn’t know _what_ it made him feel, because he had never felt it before. No one had ever needed that before, not from him. Theories, perhaps, or logic, assistance with esoteric things, but he had never had someone just fold themselves in against his chest and _cling_ to him, not even his younger siblings, much less a potential lover.

And now, of course, he couldn’t help but wonder if he could have had that all along. He’d heard the barely suppressed longing in Earl’s voice, lingering over a few subjects during their interviews or just their rambling discussions. The melancholy seemed to center around a certain radio presenter, unsurprisingly, but also love and youthful happiness. Earl clearly missed his younger years and while he took pride in his job at almost every opportunity, didn’t seem to find adult life beyond that to be very appealing or interesting. Was that just a sort of nostalgia? He had always presumed it was something with Cecil, and when he eventually heard what Earl’s final words to Cecil were, they did not surprise him. But now, in light of the kiss, Carlos wondered how much of what Earl had been saying was some kind of subconscious cry for recognition, for _Carlos_ to notice what Cecil wasn’t, even if Earl would never let himself admit it, for love of his best friend and his best friend’s crush on Carlos. 

Carlos didn’t understand people. He could collect observational, typically third party, data, compile it, turn over the facts in his head, but that didn’t mean he knew what they _meant_. He was bad at hypotheses when they had to do with uncontrolled variables like the human brain and emotions. Why would Earl have been so adamant that Carlos pay more attention to Cecil or that Cecil really, truly loved him and that he should try returning that affection, if Earl had some kind of romantic feelings not just for Cecil, but for _Carlos_ as well. Why would he even be _interested_ in Carlos? Earl had done nothing but save him and tell him things that any child in Night Vale should have already known. Or was he reading the entirely wrong set of underpinnings in the things Earl had done? Could Earl have simply kissed him as some form of either revenge against Cecil, or a replacement, whereby he could have from Carlos, the object of Cecil’s affections, what he couldn’t have from Cecil? 

Thinking about it made his head hurt. He probably had more chance of figuring out what was going on with all the clocks in Night Vale than to ever understand even people _outside_ of Night Vale, much less inside of it. He was pretty sure his earlier scenarios were melodramatic in the extreme, but then, a lot of human interaction seemed melodramatic and odd to him, so he couldn’t be sure.

The only way to figure it out would be to make more observations about Earl, which he was now _very much_ hoping he would get a chance to do. Maybe he could make those observations over coffee. Or dinner. Or, judging by that kiss, possibly _breakfast_.

Or perhaps the answer was D – None of the Above.

Earl didn’t come back and the point was moot. Earl was dragged away, suddenly, by strange forces in the guise of hollow-eyed children, and Carlos began to understand that there were entirely new ways that this town could be terrifying and he started to understand, a little, why Earl was so adamant about him seeing Cecil, why you might want to take your happiness in hand as quickly as possible once you first saw it. He made a vow that he would talk more to Cecil, and he did, and he tried to put Earl and the kiss and everything else out of his mind. Earl’s last wish had been for him to give Cecil a chance, and it wasn’t as though he didn’t _like_ him, or that he couldn’t see or feel any kind of chemistry between them. There definitely was. He had been hopelessly tongue-tied or rambling every time he had ever tried to talk to Cecil, heat rising to his cheeks no matter how much he tried to tell himself he wasn’t affected. It was just that he wasn’t _sure_. He didn’t come here for a relationship, after all. He had work to do and he wasn’t good boyfriend material for someone like Cecil anyway, or possibly for _anyone_. But he’d promised Earl, so he would invite him to some coffee and try to slowly, carefully, get to know him better, and then he promptly forgot to invite him to coffee and forgot even that he had said yes to meeting him when Cecil said he had something to give him.

He forgot all of it, until he was being lifted out of the miniature city under lane 5. He forgot all of it until Earl wasn’t there to save him and, lying on the ground, bleeding and disoriented, he realized how _often_ Earl had saved him. He wondered several things then—how much of that was originally Earl doing it for Cecil’s sake, and when it switched over to doing it for Carlos’s sake, and whether Earl _knew_ that he didn’t understand what Earl had given him, when he told him not to get himself killed. 

It didn’t make him any more sure about anything. Not Cecil, and definitely not Night Vale, but it made him realize if he waited until he was sure, what might happen before then? Who was to say he wouldn’t get dragged off by hollow-eyed children or killed by miniature people or have a large animal fall out of the sky from a potentially malevolent member of the school board. What was to say _Cecil_ wouldn’t. Carlos knew there was something special about his role in the town, a mystery that he hadn’t had time to explore, but surely whatever that connection was, it didn’t leave him invulnerable. Laying there, in a small puddle of his own blood and listening to the sounds of the consequences, once again deferred to someone other than himself, he understood, for the first time, the consequences of _waiting_. Earl, after all, had seemed sure, decisive, when he’d talked to Cecil, when he’d kissed him and he had spent nearly a year as Carlos’s friend and who knows how many as Cecil’s. How long would Carlos need to wait before he _was_ sure. And would he even be given that time?

He knew it was a selfish, horrible thought, but he didn’t want to end up like Earl.

So even though his fingers still shook and felt a little numb, even though he had never been less sure of anything in his life, he called Cecil as soon as he was able to. A man was dead because of him, because of his stupidity and his inability to think of one set of consequences prior to doing a damn fool thing and another had died after protecting him from disaster after disaster. He could do nothing for the former, but the latter was a different story and that it involved bringing happiness to a third by _not_ considering the consequences anymore made it, perhaps, a fitting send off for the first. 

Seeing Cecil light up (thankfully metaphorically) when he said he just wanted to see him, made something settle deep down inside him, something that hadn’t felt settled in a long time, but that Earl had pried up completely only a few weeks before.

Sometimes, he mused, partially outloud, Cecil curled warm against his side like he’d been meant to be there all along, things seemed so strange, or malevolent, and then you found out that, underneath, they were something else altogether. Cecil said he understood but, for once, Carlos was fairly sure he didn’t, not fully. Carlos was not the kind of man to fall in love instantly. Carlos wasn’t even _sure_ he was in love now. He wondered if he would be, eventually, if this was fair to Cecil—to be sitting on the back of his car, watching the stars and wondering if Earl was out there somewhere, sometime, someplace, looking at the same ones. He felt like these moments were stolen, but he wasn’t sure who he was stealing them _from_.

He still wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t a replacement. He wasn’t sure Cecil wasn’t. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have been a replacement for Earl, if he had stayed and he’d gotten to kiss him again. What he _was_ sure of, however, was that he was tired of being alone, that Cecil was warm against his side and that, when he put a hand on his knee, experimentally, and Cecil leaned into the living warmth of him and put his head on his shoulder, it felt so _right_ that he never wanted to move again.

That was something. That meant something. _That_ was something that he could understand.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything is exciting, particularly existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a little segue chapter. I thought originally it would be part of the next chapter, but it decided it needed to be it's own thing. 
> 
> This chapter contains spoilers for "Condos".

“No, not a condo.”

“Cecil… is that…?” a neck turns. Somewhere, perhaps some _when_ else, a radio presenter is saying that the man who was totally his boyfriend said something else. Here, a radio presenter is standing, arms full of said boyfriend, staring at one of the condos.

Inside the condo, there is a third man.

He is just floating there, as mute as the children who took him away. One of the two men outside the condo makes a noise of distress. One of them struggles down out of the other’s arms, takes a knee on the ground, gritting his teeth. Mountains and numbers and dark planets lit by no sun float through their minds, but so too does a memory of five words, the memory of a series of desperate kisses, the memories, similar but not shared, of late night conversations and cold pizza and laughter.

They race each other to the condo, in a panic, but both stop, cold, just outside it. Around them is the feel a certain type of sand makes under your feet. Around them, the condos are leaving Night Vale, slowly, almost imperceptibly. The one the man is inside is slowly, slowly coming to rest on the ground.

“… I… I can’t,” one of the men not inside the condo says, voice shaking, “I can’t _again_.”

“I think,” says the other, eyes judging the distance, calculating the angles, “I think if you hold onto my hand, I might still be able to reach him…”

“And what if you don’t want to come out?” another neck turns, and lips brush the back of a set of knuckles, 

“It’s a statistically acceptable risk. After all, I’ve just been reminded of what I have to return to,” two sets of lips curve into smiles and then meet, briefly.

Heroics have, historically, not gone well for one of the men, but then, both of the other two seem to be prone to making it out of their own disasters relatively unscathed, and he’s got his hands in one each of theirs, so…

There is no time, then, to consider an entirely different set of potential consequences. There is no time, then, to do anything but reach, and grasp.

And pull.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cecil is both in shock and has a blanket. These things are not connected. There is a conversation and a revelation. These things are directly connected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some pretty serious spoilers for some of the content in "Condos". All of these spoilers are merely references to the events in "Condos" and mostly deal with the final outcome, not how anyone got to that outcome. 
> 
> Still, consider yourself warned.

He didn’t really _want_ to leave the two of them, not even for a moment, not when he had almost lost Carlos and then, miraculously and unexpectedly, regained Earl all in one day— in one afternoon, even! Even by Night Vale standards, today had been a pretty crazy day and he really just wanted to curl up in his bed and rest. 

But after Carlos had helped him get the very-unconscious-but-thankfully-breathing Earl into bed, he had collapsed on the far side of it, passing out mid-sentence. Cecil couldn’t exactly _blame_ him—he’d been inside the condos twice in one day, after all, and even just the once had been pretty emotionally exhausting for him—but he was taking up his whole side of the bed and Earl was on Cecil’s and the only way Cecil would have been able to fit was if all three of them snuggled up to one another, which he was _definitely not_ thinking too hard about, nor had he been thinking about it since Carlos had tugged Earl out of the Condo and both of them had promptly fallen over into his arms, their combined weight pressing him down to the ground, their bodies like a blanket over him and—

Nope. Noooooope. Not thinking about it.

He was extremely good at not thinking about things (when he wanted to be, at least) and was doing an admirable job of it, currently. But not thinking about didn’t help him at all when he walked back into his bedroom with an extra blanket and found that, perhaps in pursuit of the warmth he was bringing with him, the two of them had made plenty of room for him on the bed after all.

They were both clearly asleep, innocent, but he was dimly aware that he _ought_ to be viciously jealous, even if he knew it was irrational to be, that they had both of them shifted without conscious thought. And he was certainly _shocked_ , the blanket slipping out of his hands to pool on the floor at his feet. But… _Masters of us all_ … 

Earl had, at some point, rolled over and it wasn’t really surprising after childhood sleepovers to see that he’d gravitated towards Carlos. Earl wasn’t very physically oriented while he was awake, a little prickly in fact, but when he was tired, he _clung_ , and seeing him with an arm thrown over Carlos, one leg hiked up over his in a way that still managed to be more-or-less innocent, wasn’t really surprising. More surprising was the fact that Carlos had ended up with an arm under Earl’s neck, letting Earl use his shoulder as a pillow and that he had curled the other up, over Earl’s arm on his chest, fingers wrapped around his forearm as though he wanted to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d tilted his head slightly in his sleep as well, until his face was half buried in Earl’s hair. That sort of thoughtless, sleeping intimacy with a man he’d barely met surprised Cecil. But what surprised him more was his own reaction to it.

He _should_ be jealous. He _should_ be asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions inside his own head about why the two of them seemed this comfortable with each other, even asleep. _Especially_ asleep. He should be possessive and protective. Or at least, he thought so. That was normal, right, when you found your best friend and your boyfriend ( _he has a boyfriend!_ ) curled up together in your bed. What he was instead, though, was feeling his whole body flush, cheeks pinking and his eyes half glazing over almost immediately. There weren’t thoughts to go with it, at first. He didn’t think “oh, goodness, what I am looking at is the hottest thing I have ever seen”. He didn’t think anything at all. He just _felt_ — a sudden, deep heat, low in the belly, a tingling in his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose, a tight, unmistakable _want_ in his chest.

“Oh,” he said, softly, epiphany moving without half his brain. “Oh,” he said again a moment later for good measure, because the first hadn’t really been sufficient to contain his thoughts on the matter. Carlos shifted at the noise, apparently only lightly asleep, burying his nose deeper in Earl’s hair, hand stroking up his arm and back down, and Cecil resisted the urge to whimper. Carlos’s eyes blinked open, sleepily, and his brow furrowed in puzzlement as he put together that the body in his arms clearly wasn’t Cecil’s, if Cecil was standing in the middle of the room, dropped blanket around his feet, with his cheeks feeling like they were _on fire_. 

It was an education to watch the reaction to that knowledge pass over Carlos’s face and body, a half-asleep scramble to sit up and look at just what the hell was in his arms melting into a look of affection so unexpected and so _sweet_ that it stole Cecil’s breath out of his lungs. _He_ knows _him_ , the thought slipped sideways across Cecil’s brain, _When did they get to know each other? How?_

A moment later, Carlos seemed to fully process what was happening and, lack of jealousy aside, it made Cecil’s heart feel three sizes too large for his chest to watch Carlos start to disentangle himself, without Cecil saying a word, as though he didn’t want to upset him. 

“No,” he managed, softly, “You can… stay where you are,” he was sure he was flushing to the roots of his hair, “Uh. Earl probably… he needs to rest, I’m sure, and if he’s comfortable there’s no reason to. Um. I brought you a blanket!” he grabbed it up from the floor and held it out, awkwardly, “But then I saw you were both asleep and I… oh… you just looked so…” he floundered.

“I’ve got another side, you know,” Carlos said, with a slow, sleepy grin. He was always a little more _open_ half-asleep, which had led to some spectacular late mornings curled in bed. It was like all the processes that made him nervous or stumbling were completely shut down. He was still kind of awkward but he seemed to _care_ less in the few minutes just before sleep or just after waking. 

It was a terrible idea to indulge himself by getting into bed with them, for a number of reasons. He couldn’t even consciously _think_ of all the reasons, that’s how many there were… but he was already moving, sliding in on the other side of Carlos, fluffing the blanket out and up around all three of them. It was all he could do to not _melt_ against Carlos a moment later, snuggling in with a jaw splitting yawn. Warm fingers came up and carded through his hair and he snuggled down on the opposite shoulder from Earl, looking at his messy hair and the peaceful fall of his face from across the span of Carlos’s chest. He was struck, in that moment, by how _good_ he felt, how warm and peaceful and _right_. And that wasn’t right, was it? He shouldn’t feel like this right now, should he?

“Carlos, I—“ he started at the same time Carlos said, 

“I’ve been thinking, Cecil—“ and they both paused a moment, Carlos’s hand curled in Cecil’s hair.

“You first,” Cecil offered, “You’re the Scientist, after all. It’s your job to think,” Carlos laughed, voice as warm as his hands and Earl shifted closer without waking, lips curving ever so slightly into a smile as though he were responding to the rich caramel of his voice. Despite the laugh, he’d sounded serious and the tone returned, albeit made warmer by the laughter,

“You and Earl. You were childhood friends, weren’t you?” Cecil nodded against his shoulder, “Was that… all you were?” he stroked Cecil’s hair soothingly, before Cecil could even draw a full breath to protest, “I just mean… right before Earl… right before the Eternal Scout ceremony, he came to the lab. He… he was always trying to get me to give you a chance. Before I knew I wanted to.”

“He… was?” Cecil blinked, raising his head. It answered a lot of questions about why Carlos was so comfortable with Earl, but it raised a lot of other ones and not all of them were so comfortable.

“Yes. He was very insistent. But he also…” it sounded like Carlos was about to say something else and then changed his mind, “What you reported about him on the radio, you know, what he said to you…” there was a moment of slightly uncomfortable silence before he added, “… Did you know?”

Did he know? That was a harder question to answer than Carlos probably thought it was. There had always been so much he didn’t know about Earl Harlan. They had been best friends for years, of course, and shared everything, a casual intimacy that had faded over the years into terse smiles and half-finished, awkward breakfasts. Something had changed between them, grown colder, and Cecil had never been sure what it was. Had one of them been re-educated out of something at some point? Had both of them? He’d always sort of worked under the assumption that they’d just grown up, grown apart. He hadn’t really wanted to, Earl was his best friend and one of his only truly close friends at all, but he’d never really considered Earl as a _romantic_ partner before, just a partner in crime. He had, however, always sort of taken it for granted he would be there and when he hadn’t been, there had been something missing in him that he wasn’t expecting. When he had seen him in the condo… when he looked at him now, asleep, curled into his boyfriend’s shoulder… when he thought about it _now_ …

“No, I didn’t know. But I wasn’t looking, then, either, “ he said, after a moment.

“And now?” Carlos prompted, ever the scientist. He was talking about intent, now, not knowledge.

“Now I have you!” came the immediate response, almost involuntary, “Carlos I lo—“

“I know you do,” he interrupted, though there was a riot of color across the top of his cheeks, “But it’s… _we_ just…” Carlos struggled for words for a moment, and Cecil could tell this was something _important_ , something that Carlos had been _thinking_ about, because he didn’t babble so much as seem to have trouble forcing out the syllables correctly, “I keep thinking about the condo,” he said, after a moment, and Cecil tried not to be alarmed by the hint of something dream-like in his voice, “All those flasks, and numbers and how _perfect_ everything was… how _beautiful_. And I never have wanted to leave, would never have left. It made me forget how beautiful everything _here_ is. But you held onto yourself and you reminded me of _my_ self, and here we are and I wouldn’t want to trade this for anything I saw inside the condo,” by the end he _was_ actually maybe babbling a bit, redder than when he started, not able to meet Cecil’s eyes and the end words drifted a bit before he managed to pull himself back to the explanation at hand, looking down at the other man currently sharing an entirely different kind of real estate on his chest, “But what was he seeing? What did we pull him away from? I didn’t… I didn’t want to leave, until you pulled me out and I remembered what was waiting for me, out here. Cecil, what did we bring Earl out of that _into_? Why did we… What have we done?” Cecil stared at him a moment, horrified comprehension dawning, even as he fought against it, 

“We… we saved him… from—“

“Perfection?” Carlos’s voice was gentle, but firm, and Cecil couldn’t stop the realization from breaking any longer,

“I wasn’t even thinking about him,” Cecil said, suddenly, trying not to choke on the guilt, “All I was thinking about was how much I didn’t want him to disappear again, how much I’d missed him. We were always best friends, you know? I couldn’t just… I _missed_ him… Surely that’s not horrible? Do you think it’s horrible?” Carlos shook his head, 

“No, I don’t think it’s horrible. Of course I don’t think it’s horrible— I was the one who went in after him, wasn’t I?”

“I made you,” he knew that was inaccurate and ridiculous, but it bubbled out of him anyway, “I wanted you to,” he corrected himself a moment later, “You did it for me.”

“No. Not for you,” it was Carlos’s turn to not be able to meet Cecil’s eyes, “Not because you wanted me to.” 

“Huh?” Cecil felt like there was a very important piece of the puzzle he was still missing here. He knew now that they’d known each other, talked, but he’d only known that for a handful of minutes. Had they been _friends_? How had he not noticed? 

“Uh. Well. Back when I first got here, Earl started hanging around the lab. I guess it wasn’t too long after the town meeting. He answered a lot of my early questions about Night Vale and I’m pretty sure you would have been having a lot more news reports like the one at the bowling alley without him. I couldn’t figure out _why_ he was protecting me but I figured with how he was about you, maybe it was just, you know, a friend thing,” he shrugged slightly, “But then… you know how I said he came and saw me before the ceremony?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t understand how it’s possible, scientifically speaking, but I think he knew, somehow, that he wasn’t going to be coming back. Or at least, he knew it was a definite possibility. He came and talked to you at the station, I guess, and then he came and talked to me… and he, ah. He kissed me.”

“Earl… _what_? He… _what_?” Cecil blinked, mouth open and moving with the words he was saying but without much in the way of conscious decision to. Now, _now_ he was jealous, but he was also pretty sure he was jealous about the entirely wrong thing to be jealous about.

Why hadn’t Earl kissed _him_?

More to the point, how in the world was he ever going to get that mental image out of his _head_? Carlos either read something in his face, the flush of his cheeks, maybe, the way he was staring first at Earl’s mouth and then at Carlos’s, or maybe he was just forging ahead anyway, looking extremely uncomfortable but at least capable of speech, still, which was more than Cecil could say for himself, 

“He’s been your best friend since childhood, right? We could always… I mean, we don’t have the house yet, we could always just… they make them in bigger sizes. If you wanted. Because mathematically it—“

“You mean Scientifically?” it was an inane thing to say but his brain was moving too quickly, churning through too much all at once, all of a sudden,

“Logic is a purview of both Math and Science,” he answered, automatically, but Cecil was still talking, 

“And wouldn’t it actually be a bigger _bed_ , not a bigger house anyw—“ he stopped when he realized what he was saying and flushed, cutting off the flow of clearly inappropriate words by burying his head in Carlos’s chest. The fact that he was _sharing_ it only made things ~~better~~ worse.

Cecil took a deep breath. He tried to think of all the reasons this was a _terrible_ idea. Did he really want to _share_ Carlos with someone else? He tried to think of the worst things his brain could come up with. He thought about Earl and Carlos kissing, without him, curled together on his sofa on a night when he had to work late at the station, his voice pouring out of the radio while they—it was all he could do to not start grinding himself against Carlos’s hip. He tried to think of something else, getting left out of private jokes or the two of them leaving him, except even while he was thinking that, his brain supplied that there would be new private jokes, between the _three_ of them, and he honestly didn’t think, after a lifetime of wanting him, Earl was going anywhere. He wanted to be afraid of being alone, or left out, but all he could think about was how ridiculously _loved_ he was and how some people never even found _one_ person who loved them like that and here he was, lying in bed with _two_ of them, after having lost one of them, after nearly having lost the other. He was so _lucky_. Surely it wasn’t right for him to have so _much_ …

“We all want the same basic set of conditions, I think,” Carlos said, softly, “and that includes not wanting to hurt anyone in the process. I don’t see any logical reason to not at least see if it works? If it doesn’t, I don’t suppose we’re any _worse_ off?” there was a definite question mark there, Carlos eternally confirming with Cecil that he wasn’t _too_ far into the realm of Science to understand people. Maybe he was, a little, this time (Was this even a conversation they should be _having_? Was this a conversation people had?) but Cecil had never been more grateful for it. Because he _did_ want to try, because he _did_ love both of them, because he _didn’t_ want Earl to be unhappy, and because he was starting to understand that he wasn’t the only one who was getting something good out of this “experiment”. He wanted to think of a reason to say no, but it was more because he thought he should than because he really wanted it. And it seemed so _simple_ when Carlos said it like that, so _easy_.

“I think we owe it to him to try,” he looked over at Earl and his lips quirked into a fond sort of a smirk, “But knowing him, _he’s_ going to be the one who’s going to need some convincing.”

“I think,” Carlos said, fingers tilting Cecil’s chin up so he could look him in the eye again, his touch so gentle and tender that Cecil felt shivers travel down his spine, “that if you switch sides, you can be _very_ convincing.” Cecil was looking at his eyes, but what held his attention was his smirk, the one that only came out at completely inopportune times. Cecil could feel himself flushing down to his toes and he leaned up to kiss that smirking mouth, feeling his own curve in response, like a communicated disease, mouth moving down his beautiful, smart boyfriend’s beautiful, perfect neck a moment later, 

“Mmm, perhaps you’re right, but I think I’m not quite ready to let you go, yet. You owe me some post-trauma, near-death sex, Mr. Scientist.”

“I don’t think that’s going to, nnn, happen while Earl’s unconscious.”

“Oh, I know. But I’m going to make sure you wish it was as much as I do,” his grin only widened when Carlos’s eyes went wide.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earl isn't sure whether he's more surprised at where he wakes up, or that he wakes up at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still Condos spoilers here. Also, there is finally sex.
> 
> This is the first multiple chapter story I've ever written, so I'd love feedback. :) Thanks for your patience in waiting for this last part, too.

Earl couldn’t ever remember feeling this _warm_. Not hot. He knew what hot felt like; he’d lived in a desert, gone camping and survival training in it, in the summer, one of them the worst summer on record. No, _hot_ was something Earl was intimately familiar with— but not _warm_. There were blankets around him, he was lying on something soft, and his head was lying against someone’s shoulder, their body heat radiating into his. It was _heaven_. His whole body shifted and then relaxed backwards into the line of whoever was lying behind him and he made a soft, contented noise, half drifting back to sleep before he heard a small, echoing one and felt the brush of knuckles, almost timidly, against his cheek. The hand was coming from the wrong direction to belong to whoever was spooned behind him, and while that wouldn’t have been enough to rouse him from sleep, normally, that combined with the sheer novelty of bed-sharing made his eyelids flutter and open.

He was looking straight into Cecil’s eyes, noses not quite touching, but close enough that they were clearly sharing the same pillow, or would have been if he weren’t using someone’s shoulder as one. Someone who was not Cecil. Someone who was not Cecil and was curled, intimate, against his back. 

“Cecil? What… _where_ …?” but he knew where, at least, could recognize Cecil’s bedroom anywhere, and he felt his face flushing. Cecil’s bedroom. Cecil’s bed. _With Cecil_. With Cecil and… 

“Carlos said I should let you sleep, but I’ve been waiting and hoping you’d wake up now for what seems like _hours_ ,” slender, expressive fingers slid along his cheekbones, as though verifying he was real. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it,” Cecil’s voice was reverent, almost a whisper.

“I… can’t quite believe it either,” Earl said, because he couldn’t. Everything felt strange, disconnected. He remembered the dead-eyed, mute children who were not really children at all and the dragging-screaming-fighting but everything after that was a smear across his brain, until he woke up here. He was aware time had passed, and that he had been through… something, but his mind slid off it like oil, “Why am I alive? What happened? Why am I… here?” he meant so much more than just _alive_. Why was he in Cecil’s bed? Why was Cecil so _close_ , touching him, stroking his cheek while someone else’s ( _Carlos, oh god, it was Carlos, wasn’t it?_ ) arms were warm around him?

Cecil told him the story of the condos, about how he’d rescued Carlos from one, and Carlos had gone in after Earl, and how he’d had to drag them both out and Carlos being barely conscious enough to make it back and alright, that explained a _lot_ of things, including where he was and why, but it didn’t explain Carlos’s arm, warm around his waist, or Cecil stroking his cheek and running his hand through his hair. It didn’t explain why he was lying curled between the two of them, wearing a lot less clothing than normal, and why Cecil seemed all right with it. (He wasn’t sure whether Carlos was all right with it. He wasn’t sure if Carlos was _awake_.)

“Thank you for rescuing me,” he said to no one in particular, because while he meant it, it was really just something he was saying to get to the next part, starting to shift, “But I should probably… go. You’ll want to… I mean, clearly the two of you… I…” he shifted again and became aware that Carlos wasn’t moving his arm. 

“No,” it was mumbled, half asleep into the back of his neck and _dark gods_ but Carlos was spreading the fingers of his hand and sliding it up Earl’s chest to keep him close and when Earl blinked at Cecil in shock, an apology on his lips, he found him staring at the hand, lower lip caught on his teeth and a blush flushing across his cheeks, “You’re not going anywhere.” Unlike Cecil, Earl was not prepared for relaxed, half-asleep Carlos, voice sleep-warm and hands spreading and unselfconscious and his brain flat-lined, blood suddenly everywhere in his body _but_ where he felt he desperately needed it. Cecil’s eyes seemed huge near his, closer than he was before, pupils blown wide, 

“Earl. I’m going to kiss you.”

“Okay,” it was reflexive, dazed. He hadn’t really even had time to process the words before he said it, but Cecil could really say anything right about now and he’d probably agree to it. Even so, Cecil waited until he did, as though somehow Cecil kissing him wasn’t something he’d wanted so badly it hurt, fantasized about before he even knew what the fantasies _meant_. But Carlos was there. Carlos was _right there_ and they were clearly together now and Cecil was…

Cecil was kissing him. Cecil was kissing him and it was everything he’d ever thought it might be, better, even than he’d been able to imagine. Cecil’s mouth was just like the rest of him, eager, exploratory, heedless of things like consequences or the concept of shame. The kiss was light, at first, like he was trying the idea of kissing him on for size but, after a moment, it seemed like he decided he _fit_ and then his mouth was hungry, like he’d been waiting for this as long as Earl had, like he couldn’t wait anymore. Earl was distantly aware that he was making soft noises into the kiss, but mostly he was consumed with the feel of it, hands reaching out to meet, oh _sweet gods_ , _skin_ under the covers as he pulled Cecil closer. Maybe it was good that he’d never gotten to kiss Cecil before. He wasn’t sure, now, how he was going to _stop_.

And then Carlos’s breath caught, softly, in the shell of his ear, a quiet curse in Spanish following and he arched his hips against him, just once, sharp and involuntary. He stilled immediately, breathing what sounded like a still half-asleep apology, but the damage was done, the hard line of his cock rubbing _right_ against Earl’s tailbone. Earl ground back against him without breaking the kiss, without thinking, a low growl settling somewhere in his chest, something hibernating waking up inside him. Carlos moaned, softly into the back of his neck, nose running up into his hair and sounding half taken apart by just that, and realization washed over Earl. Carlos, hard _for him_ , moaning at his touch, Cecil’s tongue against his, and he felt dizzy, couldn’t get enough air… He didn’t think he did anything embarrassing like faint, but he didn’t remember tearing his mouth off Cecil’s, only stretching his neck on the pillow trying to fill the inside of his lungs while Carlos’s fingers slipped down lazily to curl over a hipbone and Cecil’s mouth slid down to his neck.

He was aware of a helpless, panting sort of noise before he was aware it was his, and he felt like he ought to be touching Cecil more, but there was too much to react to to even properly _react_ to, much less add anything of his own. Cecil’s mouth was hot against his jugular, Carlos’s his spine, and he arched his neck and for a moment it felt like they were _competing_ for who got the little spot up behind his ear, then kissing each other against it, quick and almost laughing. And then Cecil was shifting closer, somehow, legs figuring out the tangle of Earl’s and Carlos’s, and he was surely leaving a mark with his mouth on Earl’s throat while he shifted into position and then Cecil’s cock was lined up with his cock and Carlos’s was still snug against his ass and he made a keening noise and only didn’t finish like a teenager right there because he genuinely couldn’t figure out whether he wanted to push backwards or forwards and his motions were too uncoordinated to find that last bit of rhythm he would have needed.

“You okay?” it was Carlos, who seemed utterly unaware that Cecil was right about every perfect thing about him, up to and _definitely_ including all of the lower anatomy pressed warm against Earl’s tailbone. He still seemed sleep-relaxed, voice low and honeyed and just the slightest bit slurred. His fingers squeezed at Earl’s hip and Earl whimpered but nodded, shakily, “Is _this_ okay?” Carlos’s fingers were rubbing in a little circle against his hipbone and he was dimly aware that they were touching _skin_ , not fabric and he couldn’t answer for a moment through the bubbling, incoherent noise he made, but he nodded again, 

“I don’t understand,” he managed, nearly entirely breathless, “I don’t understand, but _please_ … please…”

“Oh my dear, _sweet_ , Earl,” it was Cecil, voice purring down into registers that felt like a physical caress to the ears to match the touch of Carlos’s fingertips on his hip, “There are so many things that none of us understand. Is this really the most puzzling of them?”

“It’s logical, really,” Carlos continued, his hand shifting off of Earl’s hip and it was a good thing he took a breath, a pause, there, or Earl would have lost whatever he had to say in the in the feel of his palm, warm against him on the outside of whoever’s pajama pants he was apparently borrowing for a moment, a rubbing, squeezing motion that had Earl’s toes curling and his legs shifting against Cecil’s. Carlos’s hands shifted back up as he continued, pulling the pants down Earl’s hips as though all of this, _any_ of this, was normal or made any kind of sense, “You weren’t the only person having trouble deciding. The solution seemed simple. It’s just a hypothesis now, of course, but,” his fingers curled, soft but firm, around Earl and stroked, once, and he keened softly, hips arching, “the only way to be sure is to test it.” Cecil was moving around slightly but Earl was _a little distracted_ at the moment, biting into his lip hard enough to draw a tiny bead of blood and making little noises that sounded pained but were really just him trying to stave off orgasm for just a few more… just a little bit…

Oh _dark gods_ that was Cecil’s _cock_ nestled against his own and Carlos’s hand around both of them and for a second it wasn’t quite as good, physically, as it was conceptually but then Cecil was rocking his hips and moaning and he could _feel_ the way Carlos’s breath stuttered, the muscles in his arm moving along his side. Earl tried to get out a name but he wasn’t sure which name and his mouth wavered somewhere between plosive and sibilant Cs, which probably made him sound a lot like he was choking. But then Cecil’s mouth was over his again, tongue rendering his useless, so he just made an undignified sort of noise, instead, and came.

He was vaguely, dimly aware that Cecil was now the one making increasingly louder noises, like he couldn’t believe how _good_ Earl felt and of Carlos breathing _Oh my **God**_ into his neck, soft, wondering, over and over, like a litany. Everything between Cecil body and his own was slick and heated and then, suddenly, moreso, Cecil making the most _gorgeous_ noise he’d ever heard. He dragged his eyes open and was immediately glad that he had; Cecil’s head thrown back in pleasure was one of the most beautiful things he’d seen in all his life.

For a long span of moments after that, everything was silent. Cecil relaxed, going warm and boneless in Earl’s arms, Earl tipped his head back against Carlos’s shoulder, and Carlos was pressing a warm, _tongued_ kiss right up behind his ear that made his toes want to curl some more, but he was too sated to even move. There were so many questions, so many things that wanted to ask but they all smeared together in his head, languidly warm and messy like the rest of him. Carlos and Cecil were both running hands over him, over each other, and the touches blurred together like his thoughts, like everything, for what felt like an eternity. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so _warm_ , content in this quiet span, even though he felt like he should be anything but-- wary, confused.

“Carlos,” it was Cecil’s voice, also sated, soft around the edges like everything in the universe was beautiful and he addressed Carlos, but his mouth was pressed against Earl’s shoulder, lips leaving patterns in the skin, “What about you?” Earl became suddenly aware of the fact that the back half of him was _not_ a mess and that Carlos was still hard, pressed along his tailbone, the beginning of his spine, 

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Both of you are so... I could watch you for hours…” he sounded fine, _awed_ even, and Earl would have accepted that, was already flushing with the compliment, when he saw the little frown appear on Cecil’s face and flushed hot for a different reason—that was the look Cecil got when there was something he wanted and Hell could bar the way and he would get it anyway. It was a rare look, Cecil wasn’t typically petty or selfish, but it was one of the hottest things Earl had ever had the pleasure to see on his face and always, _always_ , promised the best kind of trouble.

“Is that so…? Hmm,” Cecil lifted his head out of Earl’s shoulder and Earl felt the bottom drop out from under him with that grin, “You can roll and get up on your knees for me, can’t you, Earl?” it was said so innocently, like he was just asking for a favor, like they weren’t all naked or nearly so, like they hadn’t just… just…

“Yes,” there was no question of any other answer. There were hands, _Cecil’s_ hands, helping him up and when his own arms gave, unexpectedly weak after whatever ordeal he’d been through prior to waking here, there was just _Cecil_ , a lot of Cecil, to catch him. He said a combination of syllables that might have been Cecil’s name and got a hand carding through his hair, soothing, for his trouble,

“Shh, now, come on, up on your knees. Carlos just said he likes the way we look. Let him _see_ you…” Earl groaned softly, full of too much, too pleasure drunk and not knowing which end was up anymore. He somehow pulled himself up on his knees, though, over Cecil, staring down at him. Cecil lay under him like he was born to be there, like everything right in the world, heavy-lidded and loving and beautiful. His eyes slid off Earl’s to look at Carlos, “ _Carlos…_ ,” Earl had a moment of jealousy at that, intense and unexpected, not at the intimacy of the tone, or that it was aimed at someone other than him, but at how Carlos seemed to understand everything Cecil was saying from just that one word, reaching for the drawer of their nightstand. Earl wasn’t used to seeing someone else intuit Cecil like that, he’d always presumed he was the only one…

And then Earl understood what he was reaching _for_ , what was about to _happen_. He remembered other things, one set of things in particular, the wet, warm of Carlos’s mouth on his, the way his hands had pulled him back in for kiss after kiss, passionate, giving, _there_. He looked down at Cecil, who was always beautiful and distant and cool, who, even now, looked like he was seeing things the rest of them weren’t, listening to music Earl couldn’t ever hear. Cecil was something unreal and Carlos was a grounded kind of absolute reality and he was caught between them, Cecil’s thumbs on his cheekbones and Carlos already pressing a finger inside him. He was opening him up _fast_ , maybe too fast, but there was plenty of lube and somehow, _somehow_ , even without words Carlos managed to give off the impression that he would slow down if Earl needed him to.

Earl did not need him to.

More importantly, Earl didn’t _want_ him to. There was nothing harsh about what he was doing, nothing painful. It was uncomfortable, yes, but minor discomfort was a part of every Scoutmaster’s life, nothing to be overly concerned about. And it was worth hearing two sets of lungs stutter with each breath, over _him_ , 

“ _Masters_ , Carlos, I wish you could see what his face looks like,” Cecil’s thumbs stroked along his cheekbones and he opened his eyes, dazed, not sure when he had closed them, and something in them or possibly way he had to struggle to focus on anything, made Cecil make a soft whimper of a noise, and Earl was well past the age where he should be able to get hard again this quickly, but his body was _trying_ anyway.

“I do too,” came, soft, from somewhere behind him and Earl made a choked noise of his own, words spilling out of him, 

“I’m ready. Please don’t wait any longer, I’m… I’m _ready_. It’s good enough, _please_ , Carlos,” he was a little embarrassed to say even that much, never having done a whole lot of anything remotely close to dirty talking, but any embarrassment was worth it to feel Carlos’s fingers suddenly stutter in their pace inside him,

“Are you sure? I’ve bare—“

“I’m sure. Please. _Now_ ,” he wasn’t ready, not really. It was going to burn, he just didn’t care, he just needed this to happen more than he needed it to not hurt. And it _did_ hurt. He gritted his teeth when Carlos pushed slowly into him, still trying to be careful despite Earl’s impatience, and curled his hands into balls in the sheets next to Cecil’s pillow. _Cecil’s_ pillow. Oh gods… Cecil’s… 

He dragged his eyes open, head hanging as he fought against the urge to tense up and to pull away, both and Cecil’s face was _right there_ , just a few inches below his, staring up at him, utterly rapt. Earl felt the noise in his throat more than he was aware he made it and was suddenly pushing back against Carlos’s fingers, an involuntary ripple down his spine and _oh_ he wasn’t ready for that but _oh_ was it worth it to hear the noises the other two made. Carlos’s hands were so warm on his hips, urging him still, though it wasn’t entirely clear if it was for his sake or Carlos’s, and Cecil kept letting his hands drift away from Earl’s face only to put them back again a moment later, like he couldn’t decide between touching and looking at his expression.

Carlos was trying to be gentle with him, go slower, but Cecil was looking at him like he had never seen anything so beautiful and Earl knew he wasn’t going to be able to come again so close on the heels of the first, but that expression called for something other than slow, different from gentle. So _he_ set the pace first, rocked backwards faster and sooner than Carlos was moving, and between the look on Cecil’s face and the noises Carlos was making, disbelieving and pleasured… 

He was hanging his head over Cecil’s, looking down at him. 

His forehead was pressed against Cecil’s while Cecil made cooing sorts of noises and Earl worked on keeping from literally screaming with pleasure, with everything trapped under his skin.

Cecil’s mouth was on his and the kiss was _filthy_ , all tongue and desperate, wanting little noises into his mouth.

At some point, Carlos had found a pace Earl couldn’t keep up with, hands dragging him back against his body instead and every thrust drew a new noise out of the scientist. Earl’s own noises matched with Cecil’s, joined in the space between their mouths, but Carlos set the pace for them and everything blurred together…

Earl was fairly sure he neither came nor passed out, but there was a long series of moments where everything was just smeared impressions-- the wet of Cecil’s mouth, Carlos crying his name, damp thighs and the warmth of hands on his body, held fast between the two of them. His legs shook and those same warm hands tugged at them until he was flush against Cecil. Cooler hands drew his face up and then he was trading soft, shallow-light kisses with Cecil, bodies moving against one another with a laughing, exploratory air, like sated teenagers drunk on figuring out how lovers were supposed to fit together. 

He wasn’t aware that Carlos had left the bed until Cecil laughed, _warm_ for a change instead of shivery and distant, and there was a soft curse of Spanish from the foot of it. Earl’s blood ran suddenly cold and he tried to disentangle himself, quickly. What had he been _thinking_ rolling around in bed with Cecil like that, mouth on skin that was _not_ his to touch, that had _never_ been—

The sick dread lasted exactly as long as it took Carlos’s hands to grab at his hips, tugging him up and backwards and, oh, that was Carlos’s _lap_ he was suddenly sitting in, and nothing between them but warmth and _skin_ , so much of both, and Cecil cursed this time, staring at them with his mouth open and his eyes gone soft. Earl’s head lolled back against Carlos’s shoulder and Carlos started cleaning up the earlier mess on him gently, the washcloth only a little warmer than his skin. 

When that was done, Earl was deposited back on the bed, the cleaning process repeated for Cecil, though without the lap tugging. He felt like he should say something, _do_ something, but everything felt so intimate and perfect and _good_ , he was afraid everything would break apart if he opened his mouth, that all of this would vanish like—

His chin was caught, lifted, and all of his focus became Carlos’s eyes,

“You’re not going _anywhere_ ,” Carlos repeated from earlier, and Earl managed a nod before Carlos leaned in and proved that Earl hadn’t been misremembering how solid and grounding his kisses were. 

Lights were turned off, positions reshuffled, until he had Cecil curled along his back this time, nibbling arcane patterns into his skin and he, in turn, was pressed against Carlos’s back, hands able to absently explore a body he’d never thought he’d get a chance to. He had questions. He had protests, even. Earl was a planner, not a dreamer or a realist, and his mind had been trained for years to spin out all of the worst case scenarios for everything. But right now, he couldn’t find anything wrong with where he was, any horrible end game scenario that was worse than this was _good_ , warm and comfortable and _loved_ , unexpectedly, but to such a degree and in such a way that even he couldn’t doubt it.


End file.
